It’s been more than 25 years since Michael Mann’s Heat arrived in theaters and forever altered people’s lists of perennial favorite movies. In addition to being one of the greatest heist films ever committed to celluloid, the movie marked the first time that Hollywood icons Robert De Niro and Al Pacino had ever shared any real screen time (no, that dissolve shot from The Godfather: Part II doesn’t count). Now, Mann is ready to unleash a new chapter of the beloved crime drama—well, several of them—in the form of Heat 2, a new novel he wrote with award-winning scribe Meg Gardiner, which will be published this summer.
Deadline was the first outlet to break the news about the novel, which will serve as both a prequel and a sequel to the 1995 film. “It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat,” Mann told Deadline. “There was always a rich history or backstory about the events in these people’s lives before 1995 in Heat and projection of where their lives would take them after.”
The book will mark Mann’s first novel, and the first title from Michael Mann Books, which is part of HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint. It may or may not reveal the genesis of Pacino’s “great ass!” According to Deadline:
The novel Heat 2 starts one day after the events of the film, with a wounded Chris Shiherlis [played by Val Kilmer in Heat] desperate to escape LA. The story moves to both the six years preceding the heist and the years immediately following it, featuring new characters and new worlds of high-end professional crime, with highly cinematic action sequences. The venues range from the streets of L.A. to the inner sanctums of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in a South American free trade zone, to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, and eventually to Southeast Asia. Heat 2 explores the dangerous workings of international criminal organizations with full-blooded portraits of its male and female inhabitants.
Heat 2 will be published on August 9th. You can watch an original trailer for the tome below.
(Via Deadline)
